Friday, 31 January 2014

I wrote most of this post and then managed to loose the whole lot...I joke not. I came to edit it yesterday and managed to erase it...despite me closing it double quick it has saved as empty! I have attempted to re write it but probably the original was better...grrrr. Luckily the photos are saved in my Picasso album so I was able to restore them.

Here are the promised photos I took during our recent visit to Greenwich on my Hb's birthday. It was a glorious sunny day, one of only a few this year. I have decided to divide my photos into 2 posts and show The Old Royal Naval College (ORNC) today and then another time the Royal Observatory and Meridian Dockyard. It was such an interesting day. If you ever have the chance to visit London, Greenwich should be on your must see list.

We took our local train to Blackfriars and then changed to the tube. Blackfriars has been shrouded in scaffolding for many months but has finally reopened and the views of the River Thames from there are marvellous.

We took the tube to Tower Hill station and emerged to see The Tower of London glinting in the sunshine.

From Tower Hill we walked across to catch the Dockland Light Railway (DLR) which we took to Cutty Sark. I love travelling on the DLR, it goes through some really cool London sights including Canary Wharf.

My Hb and I have not visited Greenwich since we were children and we were really impressed how the area has been developed, it used to be quite a dive 40 years ago.

The Cutty Sark has been fully restored following the fire and now rests in an amazing glass dry dock.

We walked via the High Street to the the ORNC which stands on the original site of Greenwich Palace, one of Henry V111's favourite palaces. It was built in the 1660s and was designed by Sir Christopher Wren of St' Paul's fame. The buildings are so iconic. The parts of the college which have been opened to the public are also free entry. The College was open in my lifetime and was originally a hospital for old or injured sailors. It closed as a college in 1998 and is now a top visitor attraction. This was the entrance to the chapel

The amazing ceiling inside

We then walked over to the Painted Hall.

and were blown away by what lay behind these doors

How incredible is this for a dining hall. It has been called the finest dining hall in Europe and I certainly agree. The body of Nelson also lay in state here after his death at the Battle of Trafalgar.

Just stunning.

So my card challenge entry today needs to have a vintage theme and is a gift tag and paper set I made for my Hb's friend's 50th birthday. I used my one of my LOTV fabulous statements stamp which I embossed with green embossing powder. I made an inky background with torn pages of a book and lots of frantage for some sparkle. The tag sentiments are also LOTV from their tags le jardin sentiments. I added some twine and ribbon to finish it off.

I simply stamped onto brown paper with green ink.

and here is the finished paper and tag. The recipient really loved it.

So here we are at the very last day of January and as I type yes it's still raining. It is now officially the wettest January since records began and it shows no sign of drying up yet. The forecast for this weekend is high winds and yet more rain. The only good side of this is that I need no excuse to craft.....I hope everyone else is keeping dry and can carrying on crafting too. We also need to finish off painting our kitchen. Our gardens are going to have to wait. I have another Guest Design post on Monday so do pop back to see what I made for Lexi's Creations new Challenge.

Thanks for visiting and I would also like to give a very warm welcome to my newest followers, it's fun having you here. Please feel at home. Thanks everyone for the lovely comments you so kindly leave, I really love reading them.

Back on Monday,

Bye for now,

Jane x

PS I am sure my regular bloggers want to see how my darling granddaughter Daisy Jane is coming along. She will be 12 weeks old on Monday.......she is just a total delight and is even managing some 8 hours stretches of sleep at night...woop woop for my daughter and SIL! These are some photos I was sent this week and she's coming up to stay again with her Mummy next week as her Daddy has to work in Dubai for a week...woop woop for Nana ;0)

Tuesday, 28 January 2014

Last Thursday I was up with the lark and caught the train to Flitwick in Bedfordshire to join my blogging buddy and uber talented crafter Brenda of Bumblebees and Butterflies . She was running a workshop for Country View Crafts and we were going to make our own vintage tag photo journal using Tim Holtz techniques and products. I decided to personalise my little album so I took along some family photos which I printed out in sepia at home beforehand.

Oh what a fab day I had...I do love getting inky fingers. There was a lovely group of fellow crafters and we all got stuck in, first of all making the backgrounds for our photos.

Brenda showed us the one she had made to give us some ideas.

and also showed us the techniques we would be using.

We each then chose 3 colours of Distress Inks (DI) I chose Evergreen Bough, Tattered Rose and Weathered Wood. I then started lots of blending on my tags

followed by splatting and flicking with water

to create the backgrounds. I then distressed the edges and added some stamping so that my pages were ready to start adding my photos and other elements.

There were also secret flaps inside. We used treasury tags initially to put the album together as this also meant we could change the order of pages if necessary. We also used the DIs to colour the ribbons. The whole day flew past and before I knew it I was dashing back to the station to catch the 4.30pm train back to Farringdon. I finished my album over the weekend and thought I would share some pages with you.

Doesn't Billy look great in sepia?

this is the back cover

and here is the front cover complete with Tim Holtz's fab ruler binder.

There is also a great tape closure.

I love my vintage memory album and it holds many cherished memories inside.

Thank you Brenda for such an inspiring day and thanks to Susan of Country View Crafts for hosting it so brilliantly. I am looking forward to the next one.

Saturday, 25 January 2014

Today I am sharing with you the GD piece I have made for Country View Challenges. (CVC) Their theme for this month is Monochromatic and you still have until the end of this month to enter so do pop on over and join the fun. Their prize is a very generous craft voucher...I am still keeping my fingers crossed that I will come out of the hat one day. The challenge is sponsored by Country View crafts, a great on line shop which offers free postage on everything. I buy a lot of my craft products from them and receive amazing next day delivery.

I was thrilled just before Christmas to find that I had been chosen in the Top 3 for their recent "Letters challenge" with my Daisy accordion card. CVC have a rather nice idea of offering their Top 3 the chance to appear in a later challenge as a Guest Designer (GD)...I think this is great as I cannot commit to regular DT work as my job has to fit into my life in some way. I really enjoy making GD cards. For CVC I decided that as my winning card was an accordion card and I really like making these, that I would make one for my GD spot. I have made monochrome cards in black/greys and sepias but I decided to do something really different and use my favourite colour...blue. Now that posed a slight problem as I wanted to use one of my oldest favourite stamps, Dandelion Clock by Lili of theValley but I have never before coloured a whole image in blue. This was also going to be a really special card as it is for my daughter's birthday in March.

I thought I would share my creative process as many of you really like my accordion cards and are probably intrigued to see how they are made.

I started off by choosing a deep blue for my my base card and cut out my 4 panels. I then made my backing papers by getting inking with my Distress inks (DI) I bought a new blue, Chipped Sapphire which is a really deep colour.

I only had a couple of pale blues DIs so I bought a new colour ink pad, Chipped Sapphire (from Countryview Crafts as they always have free postage and are really reasonable. I also originally bought my accordion die there which is how I found their challenge blog) . This is a really gorgeous deep blue and my fingers looked spectacular that day even after washing. My Hb asked me how I had bruised my fingers ;0)
I made 2 sheets of backing papers and after they had dried overnight I cut out the inner panels. I then got inky with some really old PSX floral stamps and some itsy bitsy tiny floral stamps from about 10 years ago. I very nearly recycled these stamps a few years ago, in fact they failed to sell on Ebay...moral of the story...hang on to ALL crafty stash as you never know when you will need it.

I also cut some of my favourite Cheery Lynn butterflies out from the same card and distressed the edges of everything with Chipped Sapphire DI

I recently won the Cheery Lynn challenge and for part of my prize I chose these amazing flowers to add to my leaf border die I already own. You can see I am rather a fan of their dies.

The next big challenge was how to colour up my sweet fairy Dandelion Clock. I usually colour with Promarkers but I struggled with the blues so I looked at my Prismacolor pencils and found I had 3 blues and a white to use.

Undeterred, after a few attempts I was delighted how my little fairy came out. I blended the blues with Sansodor and used the white to highlight

It was then the daunting task of fussy cutting her out as she did not fit on my panel unless I did so.
You will also see my finished butterflies in these photos.

Here goes.................the light was awful when I took this photo, she is much prettier in real life. I have never coloured hair blue...I really like it. I also added some Glamour Dust to sparkle her wings, flowers and dandelion

So with all the elements made it was time to get creative and put my design together.
Here are a few peeps...

After lots of moving things around and changing the order here is my finished card...............

and here are close ups of the panels. The lovely birthday sentiment is from the LOTV quotables stamps from the Pretty Vintage stamps I won last June. I use all these stamps so much.

I hope you enjoyed my little tut...this really is a sweetheart of a card for my sweetheart of a daughter.

108 High St, Carshalton, Surrey, SM5 3AE Gorgeous painting is by in house artist Karen Baker

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About Me

Welcome to Jane's Journal. Having worked for the NHS as a physiotherapist for 34 years I now follow a crafting life selling my handmade cards in Dotty's, a local vintage tea room. My passions are as a papercrafter, silversmith, jewellery maker, and occasional cake decorator. I am a Design Team Member for Country View Crafts, Visible Image and STAMPlorations. I enjoy occasional Guest Designing for other stamp companies/card challenges. My work has been published and appeared on TV. I am also a keen photographer and gardener.
I am the wife of a very dear husband and have 2 wonderful grown up children (but always my babies to me). Our lives have been blessed by the arrival of our 2 darling grandchildren; Daisy Jane, in 2013 and Jack in 2017. We also have a very special cat called Billy who shares our home.
My blog is written to share my hobbies, crafts and gardening and to create a journal I can look back on. Thanks for visiting me here and watching my creative journey.
Please don't be shy - do leave a comment and say hello, it's great to realise that I'm not rambling to myself but even if you don't wish to just pull up a chair, make yourself comfy and have a read.
Jane x